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TypeScript joins 5 most used languages in 2022 lineup

Stackoverflow survey: JavaScript still in lead. Plus, you may hate COBOL, but users saw a salary jump

The annual Stackoverflow survey is here and while JavaScript continues to rule the roost, TypeScript has edged past Java to make it into the top five most commonly used programming languages.

Microsoft's superset of JavaScript has been slowly creeping up the rankings: it was seventh most used in 2021, up from ninth place in 2020, and languished in 12th in 2018. In the latest study it was fifth.

Interestingly, despite TypeScript's popularity in the usage stakes, affection for the technology dropped. Rust continued its run as the most loved language (87 percent of developers wanted to continue using it) but TypeScript slipped from third to fourth in the fondness stakes as Elixir leapt into second place from fourth in 2021.

Also notable in the 71,547 responses regarding programming languages was a switch again between Python and SQL. In 2021, Python pushed out SQL to be the third most commonly used language. This year SQL regained third place, just behind second placed HTML /CSS.

And the most hated...

Unsurprisingly, developers still dread that tap on the shoulder from the finance department for a tweak to that bit of code upon which the entire company depends. Visual Basic for Applications and COBOL still lurk within the top three most dreaded technologies.

The operating system rankings were little changed: Windows won out for personal and professional use, although for professional use Linux passed macOS to take second place with 40 percent of responses compared to Apple's 33 percent. Most notable was the growth of Windows Subsystem for Linux, which now accounts for 14 percent of personal use compared with a barely registering 3 percent in 2021.

The Stackoverflow team introduced a new category this year for version control systems and, unsurprisingly, Git enjoyed a commanding 94 percent of responses with second placed SVN managing a paltry 5 percent. Disturbingly, while the majority of those learning to code used Git for version control a worrying 17 percent stated "I don't use one." Something to add to the curriculum for sure.

As was the case in 2021, AWS was the most popular cloud platform, although Microsoft's Azure swiped second place from Google Cloud. However, wannabe coders ditched the preferences of the professionals in favour of Heroku, which took the top spot. Google Cloud was second and AWS and Azure trailed in fourth and fifth place respectively.

Salaries are up

And salaries? They have gone up since 2021. Respondents to the survey reported, on average, median salaries increased by approximately 23 percent. The big winners included COBOL, where the median yearly salary jumped from $52,340 to $75,592.

Microsoft continued its dominance of developer tools, with 74 percent of 71,010 respondents using Visual Studio Code, a slight increase on the 71 percent of 2021. Although still in second place, usage of the fuller fat Visual Studio dropped slightly to 32 percent from 33 percent, while IntelliJ and Notepad++ were pretty much neck and neck at third and fourth place respectively (a swap from 2021.)

Demonstrating that there remains life in the old dog yet, .NET topped the "other frameworks and libraries" category, although NumPy was preferred by users learning to code. Stackoverflow decided to move Node.js from the "programming, scripting and markup languages" category in 2021 to the more appropriate "web frameworks" category where it took the top spot from React.js with 47 percent of the 58,743 respondents using it compared to 43 percent using React.js.

As for the survey itself, it came from developers in 180 countries (but not those under sanction by the US) and, as with 2021, respondents who spent less than three minutes on the survey were discarded. In fact, due to additional questions, the median time spent was actually just over 15 minutes. ®

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